It’s time to bring down more statues

[mizzou]

There isnt one country in the world free from some nasty truth. Tearing down statues just puts new paint on rotten walls.

Whenever this new utopia exists, let me know where it lands so I can steer my heathen ass far away.

 

[Jhhnn]

It's hard to imagine black Americans feeling good about monumental statues of Confederate Civil War heroes standing over places they live. They're the symbols of Jim Crow erected by White Supremacists to remind everybody to keep their place in the greater scheme of things. Even if the symbology isn't the same for Whites I doubt it's changed much for Blacks.

 

[darkswordsman17]

There isnt one country in the world free from some nasty truth. Tearing down statues just puts new paint on rotten walls.

Whenever this new utopia exists, let me know where it lands so I can steer my heathen ass far away.

By that logic, we shouldn't rebuild anything ever. We should just let it stay in its dilapidated state as a reminder of the inherent rottenness.

Oh, I don't think you'll have to worry about that, I'm guessing you'll be one of the dipshits willing to make sure that everyone knows how you're sticking to your "principles" about not knowing history despite your claims that a fucking statue somehow teaches people it and so serves a purpose.

 

[mindless1]

To decide which interpretation is correct would require reading that rather long linked paper.

No it doesn't. That's inherent in human nature aka only an idiot would want to coddle whiners at their own expense.

The truth will set you free. Handouts won't.

 

[zinfamous]

The amount of circle jerking when this guy posts is amazing.

@zinfamous So you think the land should be given back eh? Then may I ask, to whom? Tricky thing is that the Natives were just like any other people and they went to war. My guess is that you want to give it back to the Lakota as it was "sacred" to them. Nevermind that they took control through violence.

History is messy.

It's the shittiest, ugliest monument that has ever been conceived and built. Give it back to them, destroy the ghastly gift shop and let them decide what to do with their sacred land.

 

[Zorba]

There isnt one country in the world free from some nasty truth. Tearing down statues just puts new paint on rotten walls.

Whenever this new utopia exists, let me know where it lands so I can steer my heathen ass far away.

How many schools are named after Nazis in Germany? How many statues of Hitler were put up in the last 30 years? How many of those were in Jewish areas?

There would be a huge difference of these statues we're contemporary to the civil war, but they aren't.

 

[Zorba]

It's the shittiest, ugliest monument that has ever been conceived and built. Give it back to them, destroy the ghastly gift shop and let them decide what to do with their sacred land.

What about stone mountain?

 

[realibrad]

It's the shittiest, ugliest monument that has ever been conceived and built. Give it back to them, destroy the ghastly gift shop and let them decide what to do with their sacred land.

You ignored the point. Explain who you think should have the land and why. If it was wrong for the "White Man" (not your words) to take it, then why should the last people get claim to it considering they too also took it by force?

 

[realibrad]

How many schools are named after Nazis in Germany? How many statues of Hitler were put up in the last 30 years? How many of those were in Jewish areas?

There would be a huge difference of these statues we're contemporary to the civil war, but they aren't.

I think looking at it that way misses the point though. If somehow there was something good that the southern statues were trying to exemplify then I could see an argument for them. But, the statues are for people that were not fighting for anything good, and they did nothing that I can see as wanting to promote.

I think this is why people try and rewrite what the war was about. If the statues were of people fighting to keep slavery then they would be bad. So they argue that it was about freedom from the North and their abuses. Its true that the North did take advantage, so they latch onto that, but its super clear that it was about slavery. Any reasonable look back at history and the vast majority would agree.

So just looking at it as "don't put up statues of bad guys that lost" misses the point because the other side sees it in a way that would invalidate that perspective. So you must shift the perspective to the corrected view of history. Slavery was what they were fighting for and everyone then knew it. It was not a war of morals but of injustice.

 

[zinfamous]

You ignored the point. Explain who you think should have the land and why. If it was wrong for the "White Man" (not your words) to take it, then why should the last people get claim to it considering they too also took it by force?

Because you want me to step into yet another realibrad-style pedantic trot through eons of history where following your reasoning, no one owns anything, has a right to anything, and this is simply endless nonsense. The means of acquiring and stealing property and objects, in the modern era, do matter.

Fact is, what we know of as "Native Americans" own nothing, because they, in fact, migrated and invaded the American continents some ~3k years ago, murdered, replaced, out-competed then-established tribes that had long-settled this half of the world. We know this now through genomic analysis. Your pedantry is trite, and I'll have none of it.

But here is my solution to the offending statue issue:

 

[realibrad]

Because you want me to step into yet another realibrad-style pedantic trot through eons of history where following your reasoning, no one owns anything, has a right to anything, and this is simply endless nonsense. The means of acquiring and stealing property and objects, in the modern era, do matter.

Fact is, what we know of as "Native Americans" own nothing, because they, in fact, migrated and invaded the American continents some ~3k years ago, murdered, replaced, out-competed then-established tribes that had long-settled this half of the world. We know this now through genomic analysis. Your pedantry is trite, and I'll have none of it.

But here is my solution to the offending statue issue:

There is not a pedantic argument to be had.

Why are the Lakota the rightful owners if they took the land by force, but not anyone before or after them? If you want to default to "thems is my beliefs" fine. I personally find that to be a shitty position but it would end this.

 

[pmv]

You ignored the point. Explain who you think should have the land and why. If it was wrong for the "White Man" (not your words) to take it, then why should the last people get claim to it considering they too also took it by force?

Indeed. So the point is that nobody owns it in the absolute sense that libertarianism requires to get its moral economy off the ground. Hence libertarianism is a non-starter as a basis for a political philosophy.

(That's why Locke ended up with the weird idea that you took ownership of land by getting your slaves or servants to mix their labour with it and 'add value' to it - a notion that demonstrated the problem, by means of its obvious lack of persuasive power as an argument. Plus, who gets to decide if you've added value to it anyway? You can't determine value without a market, and that's the very thing the argument is trying to justify in the first place.)

I don't know what the answer is, other than messy negotiations, and muddling through with a view to reducing suffering and meeting people's needs. Property rights are a consequence of that process, they don't underlie it.

 

[pmv]

No it doesn't. That's inherent in human nature aka only an idiot would want to coddle whiners at their own expense.

The truth will set you free. Handouts won't.

I don't know what you are on about, though I suspect you may be declaring your racism.

 

[fskimospy]

There isnt one country in the world free from some nasty truth. Tearing down statues just puts new paint on rotten walls.

Whenever this new utopia exists, let me know where it lands so I can steer my heathen ass far away.

How about we just follow a simple rule where we don't use public property and public money to build and maintain monuments to people who committed treason in order to perpetuate the race-based enslavement of people?

 

[zinfamous]

There is not a pedantic argument to be had.

Why are the Lakota the rightful owners if they took the land by force, but not anyone before or after them? If you want to default to "thems is my beliefs" fine. I personally find that to be a shitty position but it would end this.

"There is no pedantic argument to be had!"

/follows up with more pedantry.

 

[realibrad]

Indeed. So the point is that nobody owns it in the absolute sense that libertarianism requires to get its moral economy off the ground. Hence libertarianism is a non-starter as a basis for a political philosophy.

(That's why Locke ended up with the weird idea that you took ownership of land by getting your slaves or servants to mix their labour with it and 'add value' to it - a notion that demonstrated the problem, by means of its obvious lack of persuasive power as an argument. Plus, who gets to decide if you've added value to it anyway? You can't determine value without a market, and that's the very thing the argument is trying to justify in the first place.)

I don't know what the answer is, other than messy negotiations, and muddling through with a view to reducing suffering and meeting people's needs. Property rights are a consequence of that process, they don't underlie it.

I don't want it to get into a political argument, but from what I can see there is no way to define ownership in any reasonable way that should give the land to the Lakota as the rightful owners. I think he knows this and its why he attacked me instead of arguing his point.

Also, to head off what I would come next, I'm not saying that what was done to the Natives was all fair game. That said, there comes a point when someone has controlled the land long enough that past claims are lost. The Lakota held the area for just over 100 years. The US has held the land for a little longer than that now. Its murky at best and is a complex discussion for sure.

 

[realibrad]

"There is no pedantic argument to be had!"

/follows up with more pedantry.

Believe what you want big boy. If I ask you a question and you then say that I'm being pedantic, then perhaps its your argument and not my question that is pedantic eh?

 

[Zorba]

I think looking at it that way misses the point though. If somehow there was something good that the southern statues were trying to exemplify then I could see an argument for them. But, the statues are for people that were not fighting for anything good, and they did nothing that I can see as wanting to promote.

I think this is why people try and rewrite what the war was about. If the statues were of people fighting to keep slavery then they would be bad. So they argue that it was about freedom from the North and their abuses. Its true that the North did take advantage, so they latch onto that, but its super clear that it was about slavery. Any reasonable look back at history and the vast majority would agree.

So just looking at it as "don't put up statues of bad guys that lost" misses the point because the other side sees it in a way that would invalidate that perspective. So you must shift the perspective to the corrected view of history. Slavery was what they were fighting for and everyone then knew it. It was not a war of morals but of injustice.

I'm not sure how we are disagreeing here. My bigger point was these statues were put up as giant FU reminders to blacks during civil rights movements. It would be the same as someone installing Hitler and Himmler statues in largely Jewish areas today. The statues had nothing to do with honoring the past, or the repressive north, it had to do with telling blacks that they will still not wanted and they better keep their heads down because whites still ran things. That is why I find these statues so bad, I would feel completely different about a 1864 statue of Jefferson Davis in Richmond, than say a school in Kansas named after him in 1975.

I agree with you that the South has perverted history with the "state's rights" fairy-tail

 

[realibrad]

I'm not sure how we are disagreeing here. My bigger point was these statues were put up as giant FU reminders to blacks during civil rights movements. It would be the same as someone installing Hitler and Himmler statues in largely Jewish areas today. The statues had nothing to do with honoring the past, or the repressive north, it had to do with telling blacks that they will still not wanted and they better keep their heads down because whites still ran things. That is why I find these statues so bad, I would feel completely different about a 1864 statue of Jefferson Davis in Richmond, than say a school in Kansas named after him in 1975.

I agree with you that the South has perverted history with the "state's rights" fairy-tail

The disagreement is that people in the south see the statues of people fighting for southern rights. You and I see the war as trying to keep slavery. If we say the generals were bad and putting up statues is promoting bad people, then it will get dismissed. That is because those in the south see the war as something overall good with some bad parts, and, the leaders overall good even if they had some bad parts. Thats why you see other people like Washington brought up, because, he too was overall good but had some bad parts.

So if you get them to accept the reality of what the situation really was, you circumvent their whole argument.

War was about slavery.
Those statues were of people fighting to keep slavery.
Statues were built well after the war because they wanted to remind people of the superior race.

If you go about it without fixing that first part, then it becomes...

War was about southern rights mostly.
Statues were in honor of those that were willing to fight for rights.
The statues went up after the war, but are still symbols of good ideas even if the people are imperfect.

 

[FerrelGeek]

We must do whatever it takes to ease the angst of the Tide pod eating generation, along with the rest of the SJWs.

 

[fskimospy]

We must do whatever it takes to ease the angst of the Tide pod eating generation, along with the rest of the SJWs.

Seems like the angsty people here are the entitled individuals who think the rest of the community is obligated to spend its tax dollars on building and maintaining monuments to their ancestors' enslavement.

If people want monuments to slavery so badly, build them with their own money on their own property. That's reasonable, no?

 

[bshole]

"There is no pedantic argument to be had!"

/follows up with more pedantry.

ROFLMAO!!! Was there ever any doubt that would happen?

 

[bshole]

Believe what you want big boy. If I ask you a question and you then say that I'm being pedantic, then perhaps its your argument and not my question that is pedantic eh?

Now you are just being pedantic....

 

[realibrad]

Now you are just being pedantic....

No.

 

[WHAMPOM]

We are going to have to carve Washington’s face out of Mt Rushmore by the end of it. This doesn’t heal race relations. I can understand not wanting to glorify astrocities of our past but trying to scrub it clean isn’t the way to go either. Jackson Square is a hallmark of NO, it would be a travesty to take it down.

I will believe you are serious OP when you post a video of you burning all those Jacksons and Washingtons you carry in your wallet. Make it bonfire sized, don't weasel out.